


Forget

by Foodmoon



Series: Oddball fics [9]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Past Lives, not quite canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 10:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14590836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foodmoon/pseuds/Foodmoon
Summary: In which Kakashi remembers past lives and is irrevocably a very confused cookie about the differences between purpose, love and duty.





	Forget

Everyone is born with knowledge of their previous lives. It’s easy to see, in the flash of knowing eyes in someone too young to know, of a smile in response to words when they cannot even form words properly yet. But the human mind is built to forget. Most choose to forget, choose to immerse themselves in their new lives either for joy or for survival, or simply forget as they grow and new things, pertinent things, override the old.

Hatake Kakashi _wishes_ he could forget.

Forget being denied knowledge or anything to do beyond embroidery for long, tedious years. Forget being cloistered and confined, having no one except humble maids for company, who were not allowed to talk to her except to convey orders from those in authority over her life. Forget being denied autonomy and trapped in heavy dresses, only seeing the sun through stone windows. Forget being deliberately made helpless and given no way to defend herself. Until a sword slid into her belly and ripped her from life with an agonizing death, a casualty whose only offence was existing. A slap against those who used her existence as a pawn. A useless, easily sacrificed pawn.

He wishes he could forget.

But that’s hard to do with a mind like his. He knows. He’s _tried_. He’s failed. It’s not _just_ his past life he remembers, there were others before, but it’s the one that drives him. If he cannot _forget_ , at the very least he will not _repeat_. He will _never_ be helpless again. Never be trapped in hard to move in clothes. Never be eternally enclosed by unforgiving walls. Never be trapped by lack of knowledge, by lack of skills, by lack of ability to _make_ opportunities, by lack of an ability to defend himself in any way possible.

Loving is hard.

He tries, but the memories of sixteen years of solitude, of being unwanted, get in the way. His parents help, warm and loving, willing to teach him the rules even though they don’t know he remembers another life. But his mother dies when he’s two, and his father struggles after that. He still teaches Kakashi, still loves him, but he’s fragile and the easy affection becomes strained, moreso when the war kicks off and people blame him for it.

Loving is hard, and Kakashi doesn’t know what to do with this forced stranger who is his father, but barely sees him. It makes him angry to see his father giving up, letting himself be cloistered by disapproval and anger rather than an inability to walk proudly. It makes him fearful that his father is losing interest because _he_ is a disappointment as a son. After all, he’s had an entire lifetime being a disappointment, being _unworthy_ of attention.

So he works hard. Harder. He starts wearing a mask to hide his pitiful expression. He becomes a genin at age 5, an unheard of age. Surely his father will be proud of him now? He rushes home, wanting so badly to see more than a mere flickering spark of the affection he craves. He finds his father in a pool of his own drying blood, bloodstained tanto beside him, fallen from a lax hand, gut sliced open in a manner that Kakashi can only associate with _easily sacrificed pawn_.

Kakashi wishes he could forget.

Driven by grief, and a determination to never be driven into a corner as his father was, to never be an _easily sacrificed pawn_ again, he puts his full effort into being a model shinobi, following the rules that breaking killed his father. His team sucks. Their teamwork sucks worse. But Minato sensei manages to get them to work together well enough that they take the chunin exams and he passes at age 6.

Minato sensei is warm, affectionate, much like his parents. But loving is hard, and Kakashi _can’t forget_. He tries, but accepting the affection is too hard to acknowledge. He can’t do it, can’t risk that again although he wants it dearly.

Obito is a prick. Kakashi has trouble not hating him outright for being the loud mouthed, lazy liar he is, but he manages. A good ninja doesn’t let personal feelings get out of hand. He still drives Kakashi to the point of anger, though. Rin is too sweet and sees life as petals and clouds, and is annoying for her open admission that she thinks Kakashi is the _‘cutest thing ever’_. Kakashi might be more impressed if this wasn’t generally accompanied with attempts to pinch his cheeks. Fortunately she isn’t as competent at physical affection as Minato sensei and his crazy fiancée are. He manages to dodge most of Rin’s attempts without much effort. Avoiding Minato sensei or Kushina is an exercise in futility. Minato sensei is too fast. And running from Kushina triggers a chase reflex and _she is relentless_.

He learns to just cringe and bear it when they catch him, but he has too many memories of just bearing the inescapable. _He will not be helpless again_. _He won’t give up_. He wishes he could forget.

He makes jounin at age 12, but Minato sensei still has to step in and save him. He’s still _nothing_ compared to his famed and infamous father, the White Fang of Konoha. The man he could not succeed enough for to save. Something he will never forget, a man he can never live up to, who became an _easily sacrificed pawn_ because Kakashi couldn’t do _enough_ , couldn’t _be_ enough. Then Rin is taken, and Kakashi makes the decision that the mission takes priority. The _right_ decision.

But Obito is a prick and screams at him how people who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their comrades are _worse_ than scum, and Kakashi remembers that was one of the first rules his father taught him about loving was very similar: _‘Never leave a teammate or friend behind if you can rescue them, Kakashi. You’ll get further and do better on a mission if you know absolutely that your team has your back.’_

Kakashi wishes he could forget.

He lets Obito remind him. They rescue Rin, but at the cost of his eye and Obito’s life. Obito is sacrificed, but not easily, never easily, and not as a pawn. He dies, but dies _doing,_ of his own volition, not in helplessness. If anyone is helpless, it is Kakashi and Rin, who cannot save him and cannot dissuade him even as he lays dying. Kakashi comes home with an eye that is not his and a conviction that he cannot forget. He will live the way the boy who died to save him and his father who sacrificed his all instead of his companions would have wanted him to.

Rin somehow fails to understand that part of trusting your teammates to have your back is trusting them to help you find another way to succeed, not choosing to become a _sacrificed pawn_. Maybe she just doesn’t understand that he’s changed. All too soon, her name is inscribed on the memorial stone beside Obito’s and Kakashi has a lingering sense memory of the one he’d have done anything to protect dying under the thrust of his Chidori and telling him to not blame himself, but to live.

He’s furious at her. For not understanding. For making him break his promise to Obito. For dying. For leaving him. For being an _easily sacrificed pawn._ But he can honor _her_ wish, at least. He can live. He can do better and protect future comrades more ably, even if it kills him. He might end up a sacrifice, but he refuses to die as a purposeless _pawn_. Not ever again.

Yes, he wishes he could forget, but he can’t _afford to._ He _refuses_. Forgetting would invalidate what he’s learned. It would make him less. Being less would nullify his entire purpose in this life. Kakashi would rather die _doing_ than live in helplessness ever again. He _will not repeat,_ so he _cannot forget_.

It’s ironic that his greatest curse is also the thing that serves him best. Even more ironic that it’s what makes him so compatible with a dead man’s gift. He makes sure to complain about it often to Rin and Obito. After all, Rin would giggle and try to pinch his cheeks, and Obito’s a prick, so he would certainly be laughing himself sick at Kakashi’s expense. Loving is hard, but failing for being too cowardly to love enough is intolerable. Maybe someday he’ll get good at it enough that he’ll be able to show it openly like his father had, like Minato sensei does.

Probably not. But a man needs goals in life, right?

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading avet's Of Peerless Emeralds when the muse decided this was a must-write idea and pounced on poor Kakashi. I was thinking about him in context of another story at the time, so he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  
> So now Kakashi has a past life as some heavily cloistered noble's daughter, who died at around 16-18, during a time period where women were generally considered unnatural if given educations. I think something like that would have been torturous to someone as intelligent as Kakashi.  
> And nope. NOT continuing this one. Nope, nope, nope.


End file.
